


water seeping in

by ironthoughts



Series: unmoved river [1]
Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Aeolos Theodori, Aleksander Markov, Bertram Green, Earl Popinjay, Gen, James Bartleby, Julian Ford, Matthew Shakesheave, Piecemeal, Valentino Altieri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-07 20:15:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironthoughts/pseuds/ironthoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Overseers come to call, know your Strictures one and all. The Whalers do their best to hold the base until Daud returns. </p><p>Minor spoilers for Knife of Dunwall. Warnings for torture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. wandering

"It's definitely the Abbey," Aleksander yells. "Only Overseers aim that badly." The sentiment is undermined by the bullets whistling past their heads, but Popinjay pops up from behind the barricade and fires off two bolts with a cackle.

"It was the shiny empty heads that did it for me!" he crows, shooting another Overseer through the eye as Aleksander yanks him down by his coat.

"Keep your head on, doctor..."

"Aww  _off_ icer. You know I don't have one." Even so, Popinjay leans out cautiously. "Hm-hmhm. I spy with my dark vision eye _five_ Overseer bodies."

"I assume these are living bodies." It's Aleksander's only gripe with dark vision; the gift is low on specifics like 'how dead is the thing.'

"Living, incoming, walking - wait one." Popinjay snatches up a plank at their feet and with a hard swing bats an incoming grenade back at the Overseers. The explosion rattles even the stairs behind them; Aleksander hears a muffled curse from the Whalers below as something goes clanging down the steps. When the smoke across the street clears, he can see starlight through the hole blasted in the opposite building's wall.

"Well." It's the first time Aleksander's seen a grenade's work firsthand. "That...certainly slowed them down, doctor."

"Mm, and hopefully destroyed some music boxes. I  _hate_ music boxes." Popinjay shakes himself like a dog drying off and drops the plank back on the bridge. "Noisy."

Aleksander blinks to a better viewpoint and scans the area, dark vision tinting the world yellow. "Lots of  _patches_ of bodies." He's surprised they can be blown into pieces that small. "I think they're staying down."

"No worries. There'll be more." Popinjay rearranges the barricade's planks. "There're always more."

"We just blew up an entire squadron, doctor. The Abbey has no reason to send more here."

"The Abbey has no reason to send even  _one_ here. If there's one there's more. Five more at least. I know it. Right _the_ _re_." Popinjay taps his left ear, the one permanently deafened from a music session at the Abbey. "The bridge will funnel them through, unless they're stupid enough to try wading the river. Think you can pick them off on your own up here? I must see if there are any patients down below."

"So long as you come back if they start swarming through."

"The bridge will complain about it loud enough. See the slats? All rust. I should ask Daud to have us add oiling duty to our roster when he comes back. I  _hate_ rust."

"Well then." Aleksander makes a show of checking his wristbow. "I'll try not to get too much blood everywhere."

"An allowance of my tastes. I approve." Popinjay flicks Aleksander's shoulder in his odd version of a brotherly slap, and disappears in a gasp of smoke. Aleksander remembers one of the others saying the shoulder flick is how Popinjay usually feels how long someone's been dead. He's never asked if it's true.

Faint wisps of transversals come down from overhead as Popinjay directs the other Whalers to vantage points. A quick scan in dark vision shows the flooded street below is clear; the Overseers are coming, as predicted, by bridge.

The slats ahead of him suddenly creak, rusted panels groaning like a nightingale floor. Aleksander sights an oncoming Overseer and takes aim, right at that gleaming, empty head.


	2. lying

Valenti holds it together okay, all things considered, until they yank the mask off his head.

"Will you look at that? This one's still a  _boy,_ Lewis!"

The taller Overseer seizes him by the hair and fear floods his chest like ice water.  As he's hauled aside Valenti hears Julian spit, "That how you lot get your kicks then? Beating kids?"

"Quiet." The Overseer dragging Valenti flings him on his back and places his sword tip against Valenti's cheek. "We just have a few questions, boy. Answer them and we'll be on our way."

"As if," Julian snaps. The sword tip plunges at once into Valenti's face, carving along his cheekbone to curve towards his eye. Valenti screams and twists on the ground; the Overseer hums as he cuts in the opposite direction to complete a half-moon beneath his socket.

"By all means be difficult. After all your friend here has an eye to spare, and that still leaves us with plenty to work with."

Julian seethes on his knees but mercifully stays silent. Valenti gulps and tries not to blink.

"So," says the Overseer, deceptively bland. "Here we are in the Flooded District, and contrary to all the tales we are still alive. Tell me, why haven't we Abbeymen been slaughtered? Where is Daud?"

A strangled noise twists from Valenti's throat. They're asking the wrong Whaler. He's only been here a year. He barely knows which buildings they live in, much less - 

"I don't know where Daud is," he whispers. The Overseer tilts his head, almost curiously, and the blade in Valenti's cheek digs deeper, arching him off the floor.

"Aaaaiieeee stop  _stop_ it I don't know I swear I don't  _know -_ "

"We have a lying tongue in our midst," comes the bored interjection. "We'll cut it out of you, but not just yet." The blade shifts, point angling towards his nose. "Where is Daud?"

"I tell you I don't know!" Valenti screams, and this time the blade punctures something, draws a wet hiss through the right side of his face. " _Outsider's -_ "

"For fuck's sake!" shouts Julian. "He's an idiot, he can barely put on his own pants - "

"Break his arms," says Valenti's questioner.

"You fish-cocked shit _-_ "

"His legs too."

"Aaa _aagh_  - "

"The Abbey," Valenti shrieks. "He's in the Abbey!"

And that -  _that_ gets their attention.

The Overseer above him yanks the sword from his face and hauls him up by the collar. " _What_ did you just say?"

"H-he's in the Abbey," Valenti blubbers. "Daud, h-he's. He's in the Abbey. I mean I meanImean h-how-how d’you think he’s avoided you this long? How he knows all your plans and weaknesses?” The man’s grip loosens; Valenti talks faster. “He knows all the ways you find heretics and how you question them and that’s how he’s kept ahead of you all this time—”

“Enough,” snaps the Overseer, and Valenti's head reels with what he's just done. Outsider in the Void, has he lost his mind? Does the Overseer seriously—"Even with his heretical  _powers,_ Daud couldn't possibly avoid being caught."

"He's...blessed?" tries Valenti. Julian makes a noise like a dying cat.

"Do you take us for fools? The Abbey holds secrets that are a mystery even to us. No one could navigate them undetected."

Void take him, it's exactly like Piece described it: just start with something crazy and go crazier, because if they swallow a ship they'll swallow a whale, and if they swallow a whale they'll take the Outsider too - 

"Please don't hurt me," he whispers. "Please don't tell anyone I told - "

"Told us  _what_?"

" _Daud_ ," Valenti gasps. "Daud was the High Overseer."

He has never heard a room so quiet.

Then the other Overseer kicks him hard in the ribs, doubling him over and making him retch. "Blasphemy," the man snarls, "you speak  _blasphemy_  - "

"Th-th _in_ k about it! Have you ever seen them together? Or fight each other? You think - " Valenti gasps, scrabbling for the details of Piece's reports " - think Teague Martin took the job by merit? Don't you think Campbell's branding was a bit convenient? What better way to leave the Abbey without suspicion or leave it in a ruin?" The Overseers glance at each other - Julian's staring at him like he just sprouted a whale's tongue - and Valenti nearly loses it, Outsider help him, he's a fucking  _genius._

"Then why would he lead us here? Why set loose us on his own men?"

"Maybe the Abbey gave him a conscience. Maybe it's all a trick just to kill  _you._ Do you even know half of what your superiors do?" Valenti giggles, tipping into hysterics. "Face it, you''ve found a real Void of a krust, because Daud's led you  _on_ , he's led you on a goose chase for decades. He fed you whaleshit from the pulpit and whaleshit from the streets and you just crawled over each other to lick it off his boots - "

"SHUT UP!" roars the man holding him, and then both Overseers' heads explode.

Valenti didn't expect that.

He stares, heart pounding, not daring to move. Then someone walks down the hallway towards them, footsteps leisurely slow.

The moonlight falls on a figure in the doorway.

"Burn my bones and call me charmed," says Julian weakly. "Bartleby?"

The Whaler enters the room like a ship coming to port, two Overseer pistols drawn and raised, his coat straining as usual against his girth. He looks between his two stunned colleagues, then lowers the guns with a forlorn sigh.

“Outsider’s blood, you two. No need to look so shocked _._ ”


	3. restless

Aeolos is alive when Piece finds him. The Overseers left him bound and bloody at the base of the stairs. He comes to as she cuts him loose; his eyes fix on her like a wounded bird’s.

"I didn’t talk," he gasps. "I didn’t. I didn’t talk."

"I know," says Piece automatically, because everything’s become automatic. Automatically she lays him down, automatically she takes stock of his injuries. Two breaks in the left arm, one in the right. Four missing teeth, a swollen left eye, a wet bubbling sound in his breath. A slow stain spreading down his front. Something twisted in his right knee.

There are more (there are more. why are there more. why all these dead) and she knows what they are, but her brain’s not working. It’s stopped thinking, stopped listening, stopped. She doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t know how she can even start saving him.

"Piecemeal?" She stares and Aeolos squints up at her, takes in the bloody cake batter down her front. "They…found you too?"

 _Found._  It’s not the right word. They weren’t  _found._ They were—

"We got blown up." Her voice is wrong. Everything is wrong. "We were making cake and we got blown up. There was sugar in the blood and coffee. I put the bread tongs through his eye." She shivers and the tears don’t come. Maybe she’ll never cry again. "Jameson is dead. Morris is dead. Ainsley’s still reaching for the salt." The words are coming fast now, much too fast, like she is guilty, like a confession.  "Not an attack. Not right. Not during dinner. It’s different,  _I’m_ different, I—”

The phrase chokes off in her throat. Aeolos makes a hollow sound that, if he’d had functional lungs, would have been a hum. “Not your fault,” he mouths. Piece shakes her head.

"I ran away. For the Overseers. I broke them like glasses. I threw one out the window. I got blood in the batter. Rinaldo can’t have a cake now." She shivers and curls into herself. "I don’t want to talk about it."

"Later, then." Little blood bubbles burst on his lips. "To someone else. I—won’t be there, at that point."

Piece blinks at him, uncomprehending. Then - “No. I’ll fix this. I can—”

And Aeolos smiles. His face is broken and there is blood in his teeth and he  _smiles,_ he smiles so  _kindly._ "It’s," he takes a shallow breath, "it’s not a surprise, Piecemeal."

"S’not fa _ir_ ,” Piece says, and now she starts crying, big stupid tears that sting in her cuts and roll off her face. She normally doesn’t care if they see her cry, but now Piece wishes she had her mask. She’d left it on her cot to dry after she touched up the paint—black and white tear tracks down from the lenses.

"I’m old too," breathes Aeolos, as if nothing’s happened. "So it’s…not that bad. Daud will be lonely now."

Piece smiles despite herself, tries to stop, fails, and saves face by scrubbing her eyes dry with her palm. She doesn’t know how he can be so composed, but Aeolos has always been odd that way. When they’d first met he had bowed, very formal, and raised her knuckles to his lips. 

"They’re here for Daud," Aeolos says suddenly. His breath quickens; Piece puts a hand on his shoulder to calm him down. "Just him. It…doesn’t—make sense. The timing. The plague. More important things."

Piece gives him a gentle push— _take it easy—_ but Aeolos just takes a pained breath and keeps talking. “They’ve—set up patrols where we usually are. If Daud comes back, by the roofs or the streets—”

Piece nods and flicks his shoulder, something she picked up from Popinjay. Stay in the darkness, avoid the light. She can do that, she can find the others, she’ll kill every Overseer in her way. She’ll find someone to warn Daud. There’s still hope in this.

She can still be useful.

Aeolos sighs and slackens on the floorboards.

"Lurk was right," he murmurs. "I was going to talk. Then they heard the bodies upstairs. Heard you. And you stopped them. Stopped me." The corner of his mouth twitches. "You’ve…come a long way, Piecemeal. Four years." Another breath, like he needs to shape his next words carefully. "You…you know Rulfio’s proud."

No.  _No._ This isn’t the time to learn things like this, this isn’t possible, this isn’t  _right._ Nothing’s right. Nothing is ever going to be right, and she will—she will  _make_  them right, she’ll choke the wrongness out of this and  _force_  things right, she’ll find them and break every bone in their bodies—“I’ll keep your body safe,” Piece says, because she needs to focus, she needs something she can  _do_. “I’ll make sure Thomas gives the rite—”

"No. No. They’ll think I talked," Aeolos whispers. "When they see me…they’ll think I talked."

Her hands fist, shaking. “I’ll  _tell_ them you didn’t.”

"Doesn’t - work that way, Piecemeal. Would…Lurk believe it, if I said youdidn’t talk? If—" he gasps "—if  _Daud_ said it?”

There’s—

There’s nothing she can say to that.

Her job is to learn and spy and steal, to know a target inside and out, to know another’s thoughts inside and out, and Lurk’s thoughts on the Whalers with middling powers have not changed in the last four years. Whalers like Valenti, like Aleksander, like Aeolos, unremarkable save for a few graces, or a Whaler like Piece who doesn’t use powers at all: _n_ _ot a real Whaler,_ Lurk called them. Piece knows the weight of it inside and out, knows its particular shame, the desperation to prove…

"Can you do that?" Aeolos isn’t looking at her. "A…favor. For me. I was only ever an instructor. Don’t have—Thomas remember me as something else. Don’t let any of them…think I was something else." He draws a pained breath, squeezes his eyes shut. "Don’t let them think I talked. Please—don’t let them think I talked."

She knows what he is asking. It never occurs to her to refuse.

Piece smiles through her tears, raises Aeolos’ knuckles to her lips, and pulls the suicide pin from her glove. 


	4. roving

Rinaldo gasps through his teeth as he runs, biting back a cry at each stride; his left ankle crooks oddly in his boot, and the splint he cobbled is falling apart.

A sudden hiss alerts him to the Overseers at his back; he barely ducks the acid that comes flying. He flings himself through a rotted doorway and keeps running, ignoring the screams behind him - more important is the yell of " _this way, he went this way!_ " Their music's humming through his boots like a rising tide, his stomach feels like it'll spill out his ears. He can't run anymore but his legs move and he runs, out the back and through a flooded alley, run, run, he has no choice,  _run -_

He stumbles over the debris in his way, nearly breaks his other ankle. He's too winded to get back up so he crawls, pulls himself forward until his head hits something that rattles.

His way is blocked by fallen metal sheeting.

For a moment Rinaldo just stares, thoughts reeling like notes on a yanked audiolog. Then he hears footfalls behind him, garbage and debris being kicked aside, and help, he needs help, he pounds at the sheeting until his gloves tear.

It’s only when there’s blood on the metal that Rinaldo hears himself screaming: “—ing, help! Help Nathan Leandros Rulfio help help me  _help me—_ ”

The sheeting thrums on his hands. Music thrums in his skull. His vision whirls and blackens with spots. He chokes and scrabbles and forces himself off his knees, he has to get up, they'll flay him alive. Then hands seize him. He thrashes, swings out at them blind. Someone kicks his back, seizes him, throws him down. He smacks face-first into the sheeting, showering rust, and suddenly—

—air. Moonlight.

Rinaldo lunges. Something catches his coat and tears his side, but he scrabbles, he scrapes, he kicks the grip at his ankle and claws his way through debris, nearly vomiting in terror.

Eight blocks over he has four men dead - 

There’s a pile of Weeper corpses on the bank where the Whalers tossed them, the one Rulfio said he would burn this evening.  He'd even remembered to move four oil tanks there. A job too late, a dead end, a mass grave—the water beyond is thick with river krust, and there are no other buildings for Rinaldo to hide.

He can't stop here.

He climbs the corpses.

They squelch under him like rancid mud, soft like pudding beneath his elbows and knees.  The reek puffs through the shrouds and gusts on his mask. He feels like a corpse himself, bones all rotten and muscles all sloughed, but he can't stop, doesn't know how to stop, and he keeps climbing, keeps crawling, get to high ground, get clear—

Shadows on the water, pain in the air. Music curls like a barbed wire at the base of his skull. He falls flat as if clubbed, hears gassy pops beneath him - no, too soon, too close, there’s no time, there’s no hope, they’re going to  _kill him—_

Rinaldo heaves himself up off his face and fires at the whale oil tanks.

The night erupts in white-hot flame.

By instinct Rinaldo shields his head, but his eyes still sear in their sockets, his ears still burst in his skull. Pain rains down on him, fire rains down on him, bits of death and burning and hot sharp metal, and his mask is filled with rot and howling and only the rawness in his throat tells him he’s still screaming and they're gone, they're all gone, gone forever, and he should die he won't die it’s okay it's okay 

as long

as

they all

burn

he

will be

okay

 


	5. rampant

"We don't need it," says Julian. "Bartleby can recite every roster back to last year. It's a good plan."

"I would prefer not to," drones Bartleby, with a morose look at Rulfio. "Must we?"

Rulfio frowns at the floor, tracking the Overseers beneath them with dark vision. The patrols are three floors down; they have time. "They're clearing this building to establish a garrison. They'll have to go through every room." He nods at the former office behind them. "Including this one. We wire it, and blow them up."

Bartleby makes a sad noise in his throat. "We can still save the papers if we just ambush them - "

"We have three men limping on Popinjay's roof because _we just ambushed them_ ," Julian snaps. "For your fucking  _records._ Are you stupid?"

"Julian," says Rulfio. The man falls silent. "We don't have the men for a fight. Until we have the coordination and people to take back the base, we avoid combat." He nods at the shelves around him. "Start setting up."

To be completely honest, Rulfio's glad for the destruction. Not because he hates the accumulated paperwork, like Julian, but because it's something to do. There are too many people they still haven't found and too many areas they still haven't searched, and each foray out into the base is a fine line between terror and pride. Terror because each limp body might be one of their own; pride because so far it's only been Overseer corpses, and Rulfio knows his students well enough to pick their kills from the rest. They've been busy.

He's getting more worried about Piece, though. She had broken one Overseer's neck so violently it'd left the man's head backwards.

And then there's Rinaldo. He had the south patrol this evening. That was where the most of the Overseers came in. 

They've locked the explosive bolts in the launchers and set them to aim at the doors when Valenti blinks into the room in front of Bartleby, arms stuffed with papers.

"I got these from Daud's office when the Overseers weren't looking." His voice is strangely pinched from where Popinjay patched his face. "They won't - "

"Are you stupid?" hisses Julian. "Do you want to lose your nose?"

"Leave him alone, Julian," says Bartleby with slow unhappiness. "He knows how to be sneaky."

Valenti jerks his chin at Julian as if to say 'ha!' and offers the papers to Rulfio. "I was going to say sir, they won't know where we are now. Well, where we are exactly."

The papers are the most recent assignment notes and missions briefs; Valenti must have swiped everything he could grab off Daud's desk. Rulfio flicks through the documents and sifts them into two stacks. Most of the Whalers were out on assignments when the Overseers attacked, and not due to return for days or weeks. He hands one set to Julian and another to Bartleby. 

"Bring back _everyone_ in that group," says Rulfio, pointing to Julian's papers. "Bartleby, you bring back whoever you can from the missions I gave you. Take everyone to Popinjay. He'll task you from there. Valenti, you'll finish wiring the room with me."

Julian and Bartleby give him quick nods and vanish. Valenti pulls several loops of tripwire from a desk and begins to hook them to the assembled launchers. Rulfio takes a loop and starts linking the launchers together; all of them will fire at the door when the Overseers come through.

"So..." Valenti fusses with a launcher. "This is for real. The Abbey's trying to kill us for good."

Rulfio doesn't want to discuss the matter, because that invariably means weighing some distressing implications, but Valenti's back is turned to him and he goes on, completely oblivious.

"I knew they hated us. Hated us a lot. But I didn't think they'd ever find us. They must've kept their search really secret. Even Piece didn't hear anything about it, and she hears everything that goes on at the Abbey. We must've gotten unlucky."

Rulfio's faced many hard truths in his life. He knows how to tell an unwanted suspicion from an unwanted fact, and he knows how to accept the sting of one and move on wiser. He doesn't want Valenti to learn the lesson like this, but the truth will come out. Better he learn it from Rulfio here than any other way.

"This place was secure, Valenti. Hidden. Daud chose this place because there's only one way it can be found if you aren't one of us. Someone talked."

Valenti reels as if Rulfio punched him in the throat. "How can you even think that? Sir?" he adds belatedly. "Only the Overseers hate us that much. Only - it doesn't even...why?"

"I don't know, Valenti." All he knows is that whoever the traitor is, they want the Whalers' destruction to be absolute; it can't be a simple matter of only having Daud dead. They want all of them. _All_.

"We're going to be okay though, right? When Daud comes back."

Rulfio blanches and double-checks the wire across the doorway. Daud is going to be furious when he sees what the Overseers have done to his office. "I daresay we'll be more than okay."

Valenti smiles and winces when it tugs his stitches. "That's good."

After this is over, when they've either relocated or taken back the base, he'll need to make sure his recruits stay safe. Julian will look after Valenti, for all that he swears at him; Bartleby will too. But Bertram is still too new an ex-Overseer to not raise suspicion, and Piece has always drawn fire for not using her powers.

He'll worry about it later. For now...

The base is lost. There are Overseers outside and on every floor. It won't do just to remove one group clearing rooms.

Rulfio considers, then eases up a floorboard by the door and begins rigging the space underneath with grenades.

They'll have to remove them all. Every single one.

Rulfio tucks the last grenade in line and slides the floorboard back in place. Valenti watches with something like awe.

"Bartleby will hate you forever, sir." He shakes his head. "That'll go through three floors at least."

Behind his mask, Rulfio's mouth hardens into a smile. There is something like a knife in it.


	6. wanton

Shakesheave wouldn’t be afraid if not for Aeolos’ body.

They’d thrown it in front of them and kicked it forward, letting the broken limbs jut where they landed. “One of your own,” said the Overseer. “Looks like we didn’t tie him well enough. He got the easy way out.”

Aeolos’ wrists are bound, but there’s a tell-tale pinhead glinting in his palm, and the stark strained pallor of his face is evidence enough. Shakesheave doesn’t look at Bertram, and Bertram doesn’t look at him. They’re both old hands at this game—Shakesheave’s been caught by Overseers four times in his life, though only twice as a Whaler, while Bertram used to wear the Abbey’s mask—but Aeolos’ body puts a cold chill over this particular meeting. 

It’s not that Shakesheave’s afraid of dying. He doesn’t want to watch Bertram die.

"No one’s coming for you. You must realize that by now. Give yourselves a swift end—surely you prefer that to the alternative."

The Overseer gives Aeolos’ body a pointed kick to drive the point home, and Bertram shifts on his knees. “Don’t do that.”

"What?" The man wheels on Bertram like a hagfish towards blood. "Something to say?"

Bertram stares at the ground and says nothing. That’s the rule—do nothing, say nothing. 

So when the Overseer kicks Shakesheave onto his back and drives his heel down on his chest, he wheezes and gasps and does nothing. When the music box begins to play, Bertram chokes and retches and does nothing. They’ve developed their own ways of coping with the pain. Bertram counts whales. Popinjay recites theorems. Shakesheave keeps his eyes closed.

The first time Rulfio tied a blindfold over his eyes and said  _look_ , the world had swallowed up in purple and gold. He couldn’t think to look at anything otherwise since. Purple, gold, searing pale greens, brighter than stars and brighter than pain, the moon the thin brown of an almond skin held up to the sun. He can make it, he can make it, he’ll hold on, he’ll hold on—

The music rises in pitch. Shakesheave cries out; his body twists like an overwrung towel before crumpling to the floorboards. Someone kneels down and pats his head. There’s a terrible intimacy in it, like a lover’s caress.

“My brothers and I can keep this up. Can you? Just one secret, and we’ll ease up.”

Did they say the same thing to Aeolos? To Hadley and Nikolai? Beside him Bertram chuckles weakly and rasps, “We know that’s not true.” Shakesheave gulps in air and calls them all something frightful, one of Julian’s favorite curses. One of them laughs.

“I don’t like to admit it, but I’m impressed. I’ve seen men die much worse. Women too.”

“That’s nice,” wheezes Shakesheave. “I don’t give a fuck.”

A snarl. A kick. His head slammed to the floor. Clearly a newer Overseer, to lose his temper so quickly. Wetness soaks Shakesheave’s face, warm and sticky, but they’ve moved away and they’re talking, muttering between themselves about what to do, has anyone else gotten any prisoners—

"Not good," whispers Bertram. "Not good at all."

"Nnhm." Shakesheave bites back the urge to vomit and takes a deep breath. The music is still playing, close enough to make his head spin but not enough to make his eyes roll back. "Damn—boxes…"

"Someone should have found us by now. We’re right by the south patrol route."

"Aeolos, though." Shakesheave forces himself to look at the body. "He had…he had the west route today, right? Nowhere near us. The only way they could’ve - "

He stops, even as his heart sinks, even as he recoils from the thought. It’d only been a matter of time before the Abbey found them. It’d only been a matter of time before they— 

"Rinaldo’s men,” says Bertram softly, as footsteps approach. “They aren’t coming, are they?”

Shakesheave grits his teeth against the oncoming music and grinds out, loud enough for the Overseers to hear, “Get to a roof and warn the others. I’ll be behind you.”

"I think this one’s ready to talk, brother," says an Overseer. He steps forward, and just as Shakesheave predicted, the box player moves from the back of the group to stand at his side.

He waits until the Overseer turns to direct the box towards him, and then Shakesheave flings himself forwards, screaming “Bertram  _go!_ " His shoulder hits the music box; his vision bursts with stars; his knee buries between gears and metal teeth and the music chokes to a halt. He screams through the pain and his body tears his leg free without him willing it, and almost he falls off the ledge with the momentum, almost he doesn’t see Bertram transverse—

The gunshot takes Shakesheave in the chest.

His body bucks. His legs turn to water. Still he steadies himself on both feet. A second shot, and odd - this time he doesn’t hear it. Silent, so silent. Moonlight bright on his eyes. White on sepia and the blurred yellow of bodies. Nothing above or below; he must be falling. The moment is familiar and he remembers it with vague wonder: yes, the first time he backflipped off the roof, Rinaldo laughing and Rulfio shaking his head, a feeling like joy, motion without sound, head over heels.

Shakesheave never feels the landing.


	7. errant

This wasn't supposed to happen.

Billie flits from roof to roof, a cold knot twisting her gut. The reason for it unsettles her; it's not because the attack came too soon, or that the Overseers have no support, or that Daud isn't even here. 

It's that the wrong people are dead.

All of them. All the wrong people are dead.

It's all gone wrong.

It'd been obvious who would die - the weaker, of course. The less skilled. The ones that Daud years ago would've never even considered recruiting. Lost children like Valenti.

And even recruits like them were still better than the ones that were so wretchedly scared. Anyone who comes to Daud is broken in their own way, but at the very least they should be able to look death in the eye and not flinch. That was all Billie had when she put on the uniform; it's damn fair to expect it of everyone after.

But there are so many dead she doesn't expect. Morris and Ainsley, Shakesheave and Nikolai. Barbieri, Thornton, all people she expected to keep. And it almost defies belief - Eli is alive. Valenti is alive. Piece is alive. Not by lingering in the shadow of someone stronger, either, but somehow on the strength of their own merit. Of course she hadn't judged them as completely spineless - anyone like that dies on the first mission - but she certainly hadn't expected them to be among the living here.

How had this happened? She's made mistakes before, but nothing this colossal.

She has never been this _wrong_.

Valenti blinks to her side in a flutter of smoke, jerking her out of her thoughts. "Lieutenant. I have the information you requested." Billie waits; the boy takes a deep breath. 

"We've lost the base," he says. "I'm sorry." Billie suddenly hates how he cringes on himself (so afraid, so eager to apologize) and as if sensing her ire Valenti plows ahead, clearly wishing himself to be elsewhere. "They've taken at least six of us prisoner; Piece got two locations and is working on a third. Julian and Bartleby are calling back everyone out in the field to come and help. Smith and Popinjay moved all the medical supplies up to the cigar factory roof. The rest of us are helping the survivors."

 _Survivors._ It's a bitter word. "How many dead?"

"We..." Valenti looks at his feet, shoulders slumped. It's odd to see defeat on him - on any of them, Billie realizes. Even after the Empress' death they had all carried on in stride. The contracts hadn't stopped. The coin had kept coming in. They had kept _winning._ "We don't have a number," says Valenti finally. "We haven't found everyone."

She's surprised to find that she wants them found, wants to know exactly who's fallen. The intensity of the urge unsettles her enough that she turns away from Valenti without a word and blinks to the cigar factory roof. Being shocked at the number of wounded is much more straightforward, gives her the cleaner anchor of anger. How could this many of them be injured? How could this many be inept? (It's not about what she's done. It's about what they didn't do.)

The clarity ends when Billie sees the row of limp shapes under sheets and something in her cringes. Stupid - she knew this would happen. Casualties had always been part of the plan.

Billie shoves the feeling aside like the distraction it is, but she can't look away from the masks set by the sheets. The lenses glint at her with same intensity as those on the living, and she's reminded of staring them down each time she gave orders. 

_Thought you would be proud._

She should be proud.

Even with these mistakes, this is still a step forward. She will have fewer men, yes, but that loss is Daud's too. She can still salvage this. She can still make it right. And she should, she should want to, she should be _glad_. She's worked so hard, deliberated so long, suffered so much of Delilah and her delusions. Everything here she's achieved by her own strength. Everything she's done here is _her own_.

She should be proud. She's worked so hard to be proud. She deserves more than any of them to be proud.

The lenses in the masks don't look away. 

Popinjay moves between the wounded like a dancing doll in a music box, following the same paths over and over, murmuring to himself as he bustles through medical supplies. Smith tightens a bandage on someone's leg and washes the blood from his gloves. Rulfio keeps a grim watch at the roof's edge with a rough map of the base spread out before him. There are marks and circles on it, and a hasty key: Overseers, patrols, captured men.

And a last mark, a neat 'x': the locations of their dead.

"Lurk," says Rulfio when she walks up to him. "Where's Daud?"

For a moment it sounds like an accusation - but it isn't. "He's on his way. It won't be long."

Rulfio nods and seems about to say something else, but heavy footsteps from the stairwell cut him off. They both turn to see who it is; Rulfio's head draws back in surprise.

"Piece?" Then, at the Whaler in her arms: "Rinaldo!"

Billie watches as Rulfio hurriedly tethers over an empty cot and rushes to Piece as she lays Rinaldo down. Both of his ankles are splinted; his uniform is spattered with burns.

"Rinaldo." If Piece hadn't backed away, Rulfio would have pushed her over. "How bad is it?"

"No worse than usual." Rinaldo coughs weakly. His voice - his voice is almost gone, as if he'd screamed non-stop for hours. "I'll survive." His gaze roves to Piece at the foot of his cot. "Thank the little butcher here. She carried me the whole way."

Rulfio looks over, then reaches out and grips Piece by her upper arm, just over her armband. "Thank you," he says hoarsely, and Piece smiles so wide it almost hides the tear tracks on her face. She doesn't say anything, but she flicks Rulfio shyly on the shoulder, the way Popinjay would. Billie looks back to Rinaldo.

"Where's the rest of your group?" asks Billie, though she knows, she _knows_ she knows, she doesn't need to ask. A strange emotion flickers across Rinaldo's face, and it's like an unwanted stare at her back.

"They killed them," he says finally. Piece stares at the ground as her hands ease into fists; Rulfio's shoulders slump. "All of them."

All of them - Nathaniel, Leandros, two others she never cared to remember. Billie wills her jaw to unclench. "How did you escape?"

Rinaldo turns his head away. "I crawled."

Rulfio bends and says something to him, something in Serkonan that Billie doesn't catch. Whatever it is, Rinaldo looks back at him, shaking as if in fever.

"They fought so hard," Rinaldo croaks. His eyes are unnaturally bright and he doesn't seem at all to care. "I think of them and I ca _n't_...I'm proud of them, Rulfio. Outsider damn me, I'm so proud."

She has stared death down and not flinched, but now...now Billie looks away. The moonlight turns the blood Rinaldo dripped onto the roof into bright pearls of light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And...whew. It's done.
> 
> I started this fic right after I finished Knife of Dunwall, and I think it demonstrates how deep it cut that it took this long to actually get it as I wanted it. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, and let me know what you thought. First fic of 2014; it can only get better, I think :)


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